Chasing Amy (1997)
Directed by Kevin Smith
Holden and Banky are comic book artists. Everything is going good for them until they meet Alyssa, also a comic book artist. Holden falls for her, but his hopes are crushed when he finds out she's a lesbian.
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What critics compared Chasing Amy to
While Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno also share such a tag, the writer/director delivers a devastating deconstruction of the male ego with this ‘penetrating’ portrait of affection and defeat.
With 1990s films such as Clerks and Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith pioneered the kind of tender raunch that, under Judd Apatow, has come to dominate American comedy.
Amiable and engaging in person and a filmmaker for whom comic and movie nerds so desperately want to root, Smith makes two kinds of movies: romantic comedies and bromantic comedies, with Chasing Amy—his one legitimately great movie—the crossover hybrid hit.
What passes for sophistication in the Smith oeuvre was in his early films, Clerks and Chasing Amy.
Not quite as racy as its title might suggest, Porno is Smith's sweetest comedy since Chasing Amy.
But lean in a bit closer and squint a little, and it becomes clear that director Jim Field Smith and writers Sean Anders & John Morris have made a Kevin Smith pastiche, with raunch-mouthed wingman, pop culture references, scatology, and an emotional climax evocative of Chasing Amy.
(CNN) -- Back in 1982, Barry Levinson (who would go on to win an Oscar for "Rain Man") wrote and directed his first feature film, a deceptively offhand meditation on the perils of sex, girls and growing up called "Diner."
But Smith, who previously wowed audiences with "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy" and is a genuinely talented comedic writer, seems so keen to impress upon the audience his own views of religion, he sometimes sounds like a vicar himself, albeit one that tells dick and fart jokes.
Not to be confused with the Danish publicity stunt Dogma 95, this all-American publicity stunt, a comedy about Catholicism by New Jersey yahoo Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy), can be recommended to 11-year-olds of all denominations.
Such is the case with "Dogma," the latest film from the writer and director of "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy."
In this film, Silent Bob and his stoned buddy Jake (Jason Mewes) reprise the same roles they've played in "Clerks," "Chasing Amy" and "Mallrats."
Whereas the past Kevin Smith comedies, like the vibrant "Chasing Amy," were loaded with new ideas and concepts of intrigue, "Dogma" is a case in which the premise domineers the content--hearing about the film sets our hopes high, but seeing it proves otherwise.
Reluctant as she is to accept her "holy crusade," she does so, and receives help in the form of the 13th apostle, Rufus (Chris Rock), angelic muse-cum-stripper Serendipity (Salma Hayek: Wild Wild West, The Faculty ), and the unlikely prophets Jay (Jason Mewes: Chasing Amy ) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith), the stoners who act as roving commentators in all of Smith's movies.
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It helps to think of Lacy’s resemblance to Ben Affleck and remember “Chasing Amy” in those fruitless flirtations.
In either medium, this is an obvious but nonetheless effective metaphor for the difficulty an insecure new lover has in facing down the fact of his new paramour's dating history, material that has served as grist in romantic comedies for decades: lightly touched upon at the edges of Annie Hall , brought front-and-center in Chasing Amy , and I'm sure you can come up with plenty of other examples.
Combining a giddy, sometimes campy approach to action (complete with Wham! and Pow!-style balloons) with an earnest look at messy modern relationships, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World often feels like the unholy love child of TV’s 60s-era Batman and Chasing Amy — a melding I never thought I would see on this world or any other.
Also on hand is Tony Danza, of all people, as Jon’s wife-beater-clad dad, the long-missing character actress Glenne Headley as his mom, and soon-to-be-superstar Brie Larson as his sister, a character wasted with a gimmick that I liked better when another Jersey guy, Silent Bob, did the same thing in “Chasing Amy” 15 years ago.
I viewed this truck-to-body impact as long-overdue retribution for Lee's annoyingly weak-tea performance in "Chasing Amy."
But a former college friend (Chasing Amy's Jason Lee), who accidentally caught the murder on tape, speeds by Dean while running from spooks in pursuit and drops the evidence into the attorney's bag of Christmas gifts.
A conservationist (Chasing Amy's Jason Lee) by chance videotapes the NSA murder of a rebellious congressman (Jason Robards, who probably really does play these parts in his sleep), and before he's chased to death by yes-men, he slips the incriminating footage into Dean's Christmas shopping bag, unbeknownst to our Fresh Prince.
But oops! he did the deed in a nature preserve where a young researcher, Zavitz (Jason Lee, from Chasing Amy) has set up a motion control camera to record, I dont know, whatever nature researchers record, and of course manages to capture the killing.
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For every successful attempt at a romantic comedy aimed at men -- "Swingers" and "Chasing Amy" come to mind -- there are 10 films such as "Hitch," which is really an estrogen-saturated date movie fiendishly disguised as something guys might enjoy.